Monthly Archives: December 2011

OAM is important in Fusion middleware to centralize the login among many different components like oracle webcenter spaces portal and webcenter content. the problem that faces many of webcenter developers that they want a customized login page most likely the oob login page or one with a new design according to their design.

Through this post and the following posts, i will help you create a customized login page.

1. Creating ADF web application

Create a new application with name for example “OAMlogin” and then click finish.

Now create new jsp page named “login”

Replace the following code to the page

Create new deployment profile for the viewcontroller project and edit it and add context for the project

Webcenter template is webpage that is developed to draw the hierarchy and components of any website. It is a jspx page which includes can be implemented using ADF, JSF even HTML more over we can add javascript code.

The best advantage of webcenter templates that it can be implemented using ADF and webcenter components, where we can add customizable panels which enable runtime editing.

The main sections of a template are

Header

Navigation

Content

Footer

1. Header

Most of the time headers have logos, administrative and preference links.

The best practice to build a panel group layout –vertical and insert a panel border layout which has these faces

Start: to add the title to the application and logo

End: to add the search and administrative links

Top

Bottom: sometime used to add search or tags.

Center

2. Navigation

There are different approaches for the navigation

Top navigation

Side navigation

Both

To add the top navigation will be directly after the header tag, but if we want it side navigation will be in the start facet of the content.

Navigation can be either the ootb taskflow of webcenter or custom view of navigation where you can style it using css ; it can be jstl or html.

3. Content

It is a reference tag into the template <af:facetRef facetName=”content”/> which enables webcenter engine to render the pages content inside this tag.

If the navigation is side navigation it will be in the start facet then the refrence tag will be added after it in the center facet of the panelborder layout.

Note:

There are different user interface approaches for the scrolling of the page:

Scrolling across the whole page

Scrolling through the content only and the header and footer are always fixed.

Like this:

This post is collection of different of business opinions of developers and business consultants in addition to mine; a result of different reading and previous experience.

Oracle WebCenter Framework is an Oracle JDeveloper design-time extension that breaks down the boundaries between Web-based portals and enterprise applications. It also provides the runtime portal and Web 2.0 framework on which all Oracle WebCenter technology runs.

Webcenter portal:
Oracle WebCenter Portal delivers intuitive user experiences for enterprise applications. This complete, open and integrated enterprise portal and composite applications solution enables the development and deployment of internal and external portals and websites, composite applications and mashups with integrated social and collaboration services and enterprise content management capabilities

Webcenter spaces:
Oracle WebCenter Spaces is a ready-to-use application that pulls together the capabilities of all the WebCenter Services to empower teams to quickly and efficiently manage their information, applications, projects, and people without requiring IT assistance. It brings together the latest technology around social computing, communities, personal productivity, and ad-hoc team interactions with no development effort. Oracle WebCenter Spaces allows users to work more effectively with project teams and work groups, including teams that span multiple geographies and include external members. It eliminates or reduces duplication of efforts and content inconsistencies, and it enables sharing valuable team resources to solve business problems, tap into new ideas, and reduce time to market.

Now we have to evaluate the pros and cons of webcenter portal vs. webcenter spaces

The difference between Spaces and a custom WebCenter App is not only related to the use of all the Enterprise 2.0 services.

There are some general guidelines that you can follow that can make your choice easier.
For example,
• If you require lots of customizations and flexibility than a webCenter app is the way to go.
• If you require features that are specific to spaces like personal pages or events than you also require Spaces. Especially the personal pages part. If this is one of the requirements than you will have a hard time developing this in a custom webcenter app.

• When you require different group spaces, you will also go for WebCenter spaces because such a concept is very hard to build for yourself.

Development cost

Spaces are more an ootb environment that doesn’t require lots of development. If you have lots of requirements that require custom development than a custom webcenter app is needed.

One of the questions is: What is a lot of development?

If you need the functionality that Spaces offers, you can extend it with your own task flows, templates etc. In this case, you use Spaces as ‘framework’ to expose your task flows.

On the other hand, if you have tight navigation and more business logic between task flows, you might want to expose Web Center services in your application.

Design in spaces and portal

For the CSS design (and skinning in general) with WebCenter will be different than doing design with Oracle Portal. My thoughts on the divide:

1) If your need is something that is more ‘social and collaborative’, then Spaces may be the best place to start.

2) If your need is more informational in a traditional portal sense with custom designs, etc. – then a WebCenter Portal (custom) app might be the better place to start.

The advantages of spaces over portal.

• Application will connect to LDAP repository (AD/OID) for authentication and authorization. Weblogic will do this for you.

• A Home Page / Landing Page. You need to customize here. Most of the effort goes here.

• Users will have Access to Group Spaces, Role Based access. OOTB

• Group Spaces may have different services like documents, Announcement/Discussions. OOTB feature.